RIA Novosti Ukraine news portal head Kirill Vyshinsky, who has been kept in custody in Ukraine on suspicion of treason and support of the eastern breakaway republics of Donbas, was arrested solely for doing his job, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Friday.
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 02nd November, 2018) RIA Novosti Ukraine news portal head Kirill Vyshinsky, who has been kept in custody in Ukraine on suspicion of treason and support of the eastern breakaway republics of Donbas, was arrested solely for doing his job, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Friday.
Vyshinsky was arrested in Kiev in May and then transferred to the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, where he was taken into custody by court order. On November 1, a Kherson court further extended the arrest until December 28.
"Kirill Vyshinsky was arrested solely for fulfilling his professional duties - he covered the events, expressed his assessment of these events in order to convey the truth to those who want to know what is happening in Ukraine under conditions where there is a media space cleaned of any Russian media," Lavrov told a press conference after talks with OSCE Secretary General Thomas Greminger.
The diplomat stressed that the reaction of OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media Harlem Desir varied when it came to violations of the rights of Western and Russian journalists.
"We drew the attention of our colleagues from the OSCE to the fact that the OSCE's special representative on freedom of the media responds differently to different cases of violation of the rights of journalists, and we have handed over a comparative table including Mr. Dezir's statements expressing negative attitude to violations of the rights of Russian journalists and violations of the rights of journalists from other countries," Lavrov said, urging the organization to avoid double standards.
